Chapter 7 #2
“So, this is the house.” She made a wide-armed gesture around them.
“It looks a bit different from what you remember.” Did he snort, or did I imagine it?
“The front door is probably the only familiar part. Then I added a parlor over here, where the TV is. Dining room is down the hall”—she pointed—“just over there. I have a small office around the corner, where I keep all the stuff related to the business: desk, computer, and whatnot.” She continued to walk through the house, through the parlor, and past the dining room, gesturing to the office as she walked by, though the door remained closed.
“There’s another room over here, like a secondary parlor, where we have a table set up for card games, board games, things like that.
Storage and the side entrance are back here”—another gesture as she avoided his gaze, still feeling its intensity.
“Downstairs you saw the kitchen, the laundry room is also there, plus my bedroom as mentioned. It all used to be the basement-slash-cellar area, unfinished.” Hazarding a glance up at him, she added, “As you know.”
He nodded slowly. “And upstairs? Just the bedrooms?”
She gave a quick nod back. “Yup, all the rooms have a theme to them, which I won’t bore you with. I prepped our two best rooms for your friends—and speaking of which, are we going to discuss the details of who’s coming and why?”
Rubbing the back of his neck, he gave her a slightly chagrined look, seeming to come out of whatever daze he’d been in through the first part of her tour.
She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but he’d had a pinched look to him that felt somewhat familiar.
Not exactly as though he was displeased, but maybe like something was bothering him.
She could hazard a guess as to any of a hundred different things it might have been, but she refused to play those types of games—not with him and not with herself.
The goal, she reminded herself, was survival.
She didn’t need to get enmeshed in trying to decipher his expressions, moods, or feelings.
As far as she was concerned, this was a business transaction.
He might not be aware of how desperately she needed it to be a profitable one, but surely he knew that her acceptance of his presence here, her agreement to help him, didn’t come from a place of pure benevolence and altruism. He couldn’t be that stupid.
“So, you know what I do for my job,” he began, and she nodded, coming back to the present moment as she recalled all he’d told her about his pseudo-matchmaking endeavors at the famous New York City PR firm he worked at, though the name escaped her at the moment.
He had also mentioned other responsibilities—coordinating client appearances, smoothing over tabloid flare-ups.
He handled contracts, social strategies, crisis calls—and the occasional fake relationship.
Essentially, he spent his days manufacturing not just chemistry but a version of success that his clients hoped to embody (or manifest).
“And you know how it all went wrong.” Again, she nodded. “In an attempt to salvage whatever is left of my reputation and that of my employer, I’ve made a last-ditch effort to bring two very popular movie stars here and create a scenario in which—”
“You make them fall in love?” Julia interrupted with a surprised laugh. “What are you, some demented cupid?”
“I mean, that’s—no!” He gave her a look.
“Not make them actually fall in love. But create romantic scenarios around them that give off the pretense of love. They’ve agreed to it, as most celebrities do, to detract attention from other, less desirable things they have going on in their lives at the moment.
Normally these situations are win-win for the celebrities and for the agency, because we all get what we want.
They get their faces out in a controlled and flattering way, and we show off how successful we are at making our celebrities look good. ”
“Less desirable…how?” she questioned warily. “Like, we aren’t talking about drugs or anything…?”
“No, god no. Just personal stuff, family stuff, public image stuff. I’m sure you’ll have heard about some of it, if not all, once I tell you who they are.”
Julia looked at him expectantly. “Well? Who are they?”
“Have you heard of Katy Nils and Noah Booker?”
She did a swift double blink. “Isn’t Noah Booker the magic-book kid? From those movies way back?” She tried to think of another time she had seen that particular actor, knowing he must also be relevant in the present day, but was coming up short on what he might have been in.
“Yeah, but the two of them—have you been living under a rock?” He looked genuinely concerned about her lack of exposure to the outside world. “When was the last time you saw a movie?”
“Seriously?” She glared at him incredulously, forgetting her own self-consciousness at not knowing the magic-book actor’s latest endeavor. “I’ve been, I don’t know, a little busy?” Gesturing broadly with her hands, she forced him to take a look around the space they occupied.
“Fair enough,” he replied, looking adequately chagrined. “Well, yes, he’s the magic-book kid, but more recently, he and this other woman Katy—”
As Ethan explained, Julia tried not to zone out, really she did.
It was just that she’d had so little sleep the past few nights, and it felt like Ethan was droning on and on about a superhero movie, of all things, a genre of films that she couldn’t have had less interest in if she’d tried.
She attempted to catch bits and pieces of it—alter egos, college students by day, superheroes by night, love interests, blah blah—but once she’d captured the gist of it, she was pretty much done.